Not smiling and aggressive hat-wearing: charges against Arran’s finest

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Sergeant Bob MacKay, the senior officer in Arran’s tiny police force, wears a weary smile as he presses his peaked cap carefully on to his head. “You cannot tilt this hat aggressively,” he says. “It has a non-tilt mechanism.”

If there is an air of resignation about Sergeant MacKay, it is understandable. A week ago, under the headline “Police accused of not smiling enough”, he and his squad of four officers were lambasted in the Arran Banner by the chairman of the island’s community council, Campbell Laing. Prominent among Mr Laing’s charges was the “aggressive way” the officers were wearing